Thousands lose power in Massachusetts as nor'easter brings down trees and wires
The September nor'easter is leaving its mark across the state, with several reports of trees and wires down in multiple communities.
A large tree completely uprooted on Lucy Street in Stoneham around 3 a.m. Sunday morning.
The homeowner told WBZ-TV he heard a huge crash and left a mess in his backyard. The tree grazed a back window, luckily leaving most of the damage outside his house.
But some homeowners weren't as fortunate, like residents on 4th Street in Medford. Another massive tree uprooted, crashing down on several parked cars and damaging one home.
Crews were on the scene restoring power to the neighborhood after more than 12 hours in the dark. But the cleanup is far from over, as wires, branches and leaves are still scattered across the roadway. And a big tree still sits in the back of a pickup truck.
In Revere, more than 800 residents lost power when a driver lost control of her car and crashed into a utility pole on Mountain Avenue Sunday morning, police said.
Crews are still working to clean up the damage left behind, repairing the pole and getting lights turned back on. But working to restore power lines in this kind of storm isn't always easy.
"This one it's really hard because you have to wait for it to become safe before we can put a bucket in the air, and that threshold is 35 mph. So, if you're getting 50 mph winds, you're going to have to wait it out before we can actually get to it," National Grid Vice President of Electric Operations Sean Vacher told WBZ-TV.
Vacher said they have 400 crews stationed across the state. Before the storm, they expected the worst of the outages to be along the coast and the islands, but the impact has been widespread.
"It seemed to migrate north and away from the coast so Merrimack Valley got hit pretty good and then western Massachusetts even," Vacher said. "So out toward the Berkshires we're seeing it, so it's been fairly even across the board."
As of Sunday afternoon, National Grid had restored power to more than 80,000 customers, but the storm isn't done yet. They're hoping to have power back on for all of their customers by Monday night.
Roughly 1,000 customers were without power across the state as of Sunday at 7 p.m., according to the Massachusetts Emergency Management Agency (MEMA) outage map.
